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I don’t have any answers for you but my team also had a hard time with team shape, marking and transition. I’ll try to be as brief as possible in my response.
1. we switched from 4-3-3 to 4-2-3-1 which is similar in many regards. This helped create a better overall shape in preventing large gaps between lines.
2. The 3 center midfielders (2 defensive center mids and the attacking center mid) were required to DROP and MARK someone in the center of the field.
3. The outside defenders had to drop and get into flat-back formation and be ready to compress/shift.
4. Playing 4-2-3-1 also helped prevent our defense from regaining possession and immediately passing the ball up the center where it would get picked off by an opponent.
I found that giving kids new to this style of soccer need “jobs” that they can picture and execute without too much thought.
I still do a lot of coaching from the sidelines but with the new RULES, the commands are shorter and easier to understand. Mostly… “MARK” on defense and “SUPPORT” and “TOUCHLINE” on offense.
Hey Caleb-
I’ll be super honest with you… my teams rarely trained defending. We learned some basic stuff, but never spent too much time on it. When we did- we would spend our time on recovering the ball as quickly as possible after losing it. Seriously though, we spent almost all of our time on what to do when WE have the ball. The little time we weren’t working on that, we were working on how quickly we could win it back. If you’d like advice on this stuff, I’d be glad to share. Maybe that could help you?
Thanks John. My intent is not to really practice defending rather just teach/point out that when our press doesn’t work after 5 seconds to fall back to a more “home” spot.
Like I said previously, I had my center mid and right back completely out of position for the majority of the game – if they did track back it definitely wasn’t to a helpful position. Holes were all over the place because of this.
Does this just come with time and cues (telling them in games and scrimmages to get “hone”). These are 10-11 year old girls 2 months into 11v11 and tactics.
One of terms I actually used with a team that age was “party spot” instead of “home” Sounds cheesy, but it worked. I was coaching 10/11 year old girls at the time.
The party spot was the PK spot. As we retreated defensively, everyone was instructed to shrink to the “party spot”. That was like… 4-5 years ago. I’m not sure I would teach it like that to that same group again.
Here is how I would try it now. I would try it as an expanding and shrinking type exercise.
1) Start somewhat condensed
2) Expand out into their attacking 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 shape
3) Have a ball and have them work it around from player to player
4) On your cue, have the person with the ball STOP and have everyone shrink and get into a defensive position relative to the ball, the person with the ball acting as the first defender.
5) From there, expand out again and continue to move the ball and repeat.
Here is a video of my team doing the expanding part… I don’t have footage of us doing the shrinking though.
John, thanks a lot. I did something very, very similar but I like your idea better.
I had my girls in their “build out the back” positions and I just told them where the ball was and had them shift (ex- “The right back has the ball!” and they would all shift appropriately). I then would walk around and the formation, stop in different areas, and call out that I had won the ball (I was the “other team”). The girls near my position were to immediately press- the others were to fall back to a defensive block position (I had a set of cones laid out to signify this new more compact shape). I would either say they won the ball- cue for the girls to expand again, or that I beat the defender meaning the pressers needed to fall back quickly.
I had them look around in their more compact shape to take mental snapshots of how close they were to each other, where the goal was, asking a lot “why this?” and “why that?” stuff to get them to really understand why they needed to get back home.
Your way is more natural way to” build off the build out of the back” exercise. Feels good to know that I was on the right track with other like-minded coaches. Thanks again.
I don’t want to add too much to their plate so early in the process- like Gary mentioned. This was just something I felt I had to address though, their positioning was so bad in the scrimmage.
This type of training serves a dual purpose. You can work on your ball circulation and pattern play, which in my opinion, is a top priority. You also get to work on recovery runs and defensive positioning. It’s one of my favorite exercises to do actually. I really wish I had the progressions on video.
John,
You mention that you focus on the attacking play and relatively little on the defending side. When you do an activity like stopping play and have the players movd the proper defensive position, what general principles do you provide for each position? Are they general points (e.g. get compact) or specific positions to be in certain areas of the field?
Update-
We scrimmaged a high level premier team (currently ranked 3rd in NorCal- GotSoccer for what it’s worth) this morning and lost 6-2. 35 minute halves, I had 12 players total to there 14. I was missing my starting goalie again, had a girl who was a teammate’s friend who came out to Thursday’s practice (1 1/2 years removed from rec soccer) and did an admirable job.
Our team shape was much better- it was 0-0 for the first 15 minutes, 1-2 at the 30 minute mark, then 1-3 at half. We had some chances and didn’t finish- but so did they. My attacking 5 were seeing the benefit of dropping back into a block to help the back 5, and also saw what happened when they didn’t. Second half was pretty similar. I tried to keep my 1 sub rotating in and out to give them breathers/water. Our effort and focus were light years beyond the 2-12 shellacking of a few weeks back. I gave a “Brian” speech and have been holding them accountable each practice. The intensity has definitely risen.
My last two scrimmages have been against high level opponents with good speed. I am slotting my team at Silver this year, and they both would be premier. My girls had a very hard time building out of the back in the last two scrimmages- I know this is because the speed of play has been too high. I really haven’t setup much of anything at our level or below yet. I feel that should be my focus for the rest of the season, really. I am taking them to a tournament at the end of June and slotted them Silver- I am going to make the remainder of my friendlies silver/bronze level. Any thoughts or suggestions on that?
I really, honestly, felt after the scrimmage that we weren’t “that” far away from the current 3rd ranked team in NorCal (GotSoccer- for what it’s worth, lol). I was very proud of my girls today. I don’t want a season full of moral victories though. I feel that in accordance to the “art of coaching”, I need to start setting up some winnable scrimmages to really put the tactics to full use and build confidence in actual victories.
Don’t put any stock in gotsoccer rankings. My team is ranked 3rd in our state but are closer to 30th in reality.
This season I played in a league where we were clearly outclassed physically and technically. Our tactics were the only thing that kept us anywhere close. We then played our end-of-season tourney against competition that historically has been on par with us and we just slaughtered them. Playing in the faster-paced league really pushed my boys to improve and the half that I graduate on to our high school program are now by far the most talented bunch I’ve ever passed on. There’s pros and cons to playing both up and down in skill level, which is why I’m a proponent of doing both via leagues and tourneys at different levels of play.
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